Buildings typically include various infrastructure systems that are directed to maintaining the buildings' safety and habitability. Such building systems include fire safety systems, security systems, building automation systems and other building control systems. Fire safety systems are systems include the distributed devices that detect fire or smoke conditions and notify building occupants, building management, and emergency personnel. Security systems are systems that include distributed surveillance devices and networks, building access alarm equipment, notification networks, and other building security-related equipment. Building automation systems include heating, ventilation and air conditioning (“HVAC”) equipment and may include lighting or other environment-controlling equipment. Building automation systems may further include devices that control elements of an industrial process, such as factory equipment. Such systems are well known.
Most building systems are networked, at least individually, so that one or more control stations may monitor the building-wide conditions pertaining to each particular system. For example, a fire safety system network allows for one or more control stations to monitor alarm conditions as well as equipment maintenance conditions.
Similarly, a building comfort system is networked to allow for centralized monitoring of temperature and air quality, and for control over temperature “thermostat” settings and the like. An example of an extensively networked building automation system is the APOGEE® system available from Siemens Building Technologies, Inc. of Buffalo Grove, Ill.
Generally, control stations for various building systems are located in one or more centralized “operations” areas of facilities. One operations area may cover several buildings in a campus. By use of networking, a single building may include several operations areas, each capable of accessing building system data and even controlling building system operation. For example, the APOGEE® system, described above, allows a building automation system to employ several INSIGHT® workstations dispersed throughout different locations within the facility, and even in remote locations external to the facility. Such a system provides flexibility and convenience in the control and monitoring of large systems.
In the past, the various types of building systems within a facility were largely separate and unintegrated. For example, a fire safety system and an HVAC system within a building would utilize separate networks, control terminals, and software. As a consequence, a common configuration of a facilities management area within a building would typically include one or more computer workstations provided monitoring of and control over the building comfort system, another computer workstation provided monitoring of and control over the fire safety system, and so forth
One drawback of the use of separate isolated building systems is the cost associated with maintaining and using separate dedicated computer hardware and software. Another drawback is the inability to conveniently review data from multiple systems in a contemporaneous manner. For example, if a smoke alarm is received in the fire safety system, it may be useful to obtain temperature information from the HVAC system to determine whether a fire condition exists and, if so, to determine its severity. If the operator must move between several workstations, possibly in different rooms or stations, then the review of fire safety system data and HVAC data is difficult.
Still another drawback is the complexity associated with using interfaces with several unrelated systems. In particular, the building operations personnel may be required to learn different protocols and/or user interface controls associated with each of a building's system.
One of the reasons that building systems tend to employ different networks and interfaces arises from the fact that the different types of building systems have particular communication and messaging needs. By way of example, a fire safety system is required by industry and governmental standards to employ certain networking and event notification conventions. These fire safety conventions do not apply to other systems such as HVAC systems, and do not account for the types of data monitoring and control required of other systems.
Whatever the reasons for the current state of the art, there is an increasing need for an arrangement of building system interface equipment that avoids at least some of the above-described shortcomings of using separate interface computers for different building systems, while retaining features and standards beneficial to each type of system.
More specifically, there is a need for an arrangement of building system interface equipment for use with multiple types of building systems that avoids redundancy in computer hardware.
Another drawback of building system interfaces relates specifically to the manner in which alarm is displayed. For example, a fire safety system may generate and display alarm information if one or more smoke detectors within the system detect the presence of smoke. Because of industry and/or governmental standards, a user or operator must be notified immediately after the control workstation receives an event message. To this end, most fire safety interfaces employ software that “takes over” any currently displayed information when an event message is received. Such systems further typically require acknowledgement of the alarm before allowing the user to continue with other activities.
While such a system helps assure that alarms are not ignored, it is not without drawbacks. In particular, the use of such a system can become cumbersome when multiple alarms are received from multiple devices for the same event. For example, if multiple redundant alarms are received, then the software will typically prevent the user from performing other functions on the control workstation until the user has performed the acknowledgement process on all of the alarms. However, in the case of an emergency, it may be useful for the user to perform some other workstation functions after acknowledging only one or a few of the alarms.
Accordingly, there is a further need for a method and/or arrangement for presenting fire event messages in a manner that allows for other control and/or monitoring activities to be carried out on the same workstation.